Obama goes nuts over Patriot Act

Washington Times:

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani yesterday defended President Bush's extensive use of national security tools such as the USA Patriot Act as no worse than other countries, but Sen. Barack Obama said he would use executive orders to roll back some of those powers.
"The Patriot Act does give the government more tools, more power, but it's not vastly out of line with what other governments have, free governments, democratic governments," Mr. Giuliani told the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce while campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination here in New Hampshire.
"All of this takes a little privacy away from somebody. It depends on who you take it away from, and what is at stake," he said.
But Mr. Obama, Illinois Democrat and one of the top Democrats seeking his party's presidential nod, said Mr. Bush has "just gone nuts in amassing more and more executive control and skewing the checks and balances."
Speaking to a town hall in Rochester, he said he will use executive orders to grant terrorism detainees new legal rights, prohibit torture and create more oversight for intelligence gathering such as data mining and the use of national security letters to obtain personal information from companies.
"A lot of the executive orders I'll be issuing are just reversing some of the executive orders put forward over the last six years," Mr. Obama said.
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Of course Obama gave no specifics because there are no specific examples of abuse. Where he should really be challenged is on issues like the intercepts of enemy communications and the NY Times' blowing the cover on a method for tracing terrorist finances. Does he favor either program, or does he favor putting impediments in the use of either program? It sounds like he is on the side of impediments and hoops.